As developers hunker down and get into the business of trying to work out how to get consumers to buy more of their product on mobile devices, some revealing numbers out from Nielsen on what people are willing to pay for on tablets already.

The Data Journalism Handbook launched this past weekend at the School of Data Journalism, based at the 2012 International Journalism Festival in Perugia. It is a one stop shop for reporters interested in learning about data journalism and includes a free, open sourced web version so anyone can access it.

The new product is designed to showcase top stories in a format that’s days long rather than hours. “If we publish a story on a Wednesday, it may hold a top space on the site for a couple of hours; if we’re not splashing it and keeping it at the top of the page, it’s going to cycle right off the front, and it’s going to be harder for readers to find,” says O’Brien. “This is a place where we can silo our best work and give it longer legs.”

As developers hunker down and get into the business of trying to work out how to get consumers to buy more of their product on mobile devices, some revealing numbers out from Nielsen on what people are willing to pay for on tablets already.

As part of its campaign to increase its social presence and to change the way people access news online, the BBC has rolled out its new BBC News Control Panel for its official Facebook page to give people more control over the news that they see on their News Stream.

Time Warner is the company that perhaps best exhibits the split personality of the content industry. Time Warner, and much of the rest of the media, wants to make a splash in the digital world with one toe while protecting its profit streams with every other usable extremity. Its CEO, Jeff Bewkes, has long been promoting a “Content Everywhere” initiative, which allows paying cable-television subscribers access to shows via all their digital devices. Yet the company’s Time Inc. division has recently started posting online-only excerpts of its Time and Fortune magazine articles, directing readers to subscribe in print or via iPad. I’m sure this cannibalizing of print content sounds like a grand idea in an executive suite, especially one full of TV execs, but it’s extraordinarily frustrating online.

This advert for the Guardian's open journalism, screened for the first time on 29 February 2012, imagines how we might cover the story of the Three Little Pigs in print and online. Follow the story from the paper's front page headline, through a social media discussion and finally to an unexpected conclusion

Newspapers find themselves at a crossroads: they need to generate more revenue in order to stay in business, but some of the ways they could do that might conflict with the public-interest aspect of journalism.

Of the many and conflicting stories about how Huffington Post came to be—how it boasts 68 sections, three international editions (with more to come), 1.2 billion monthly page views and 54 million comments in the past year alone, how it came to surpass the traffic of virtually all the nation’s established news organizations and amass content so voluminous that a visit to the website feels like a trip to a mall where the exits are impossible to locate—the earliest and arguably most telling begins with a lunch in March 2003 at which the idea of an online newspaper filled with celebrity bloggers and virally disseminated aggregated content did not come up.

Digital news is becoming a multi-device experience. For now, desktop and laptop computers remain the most popular way that people in the U.S. access digital news venues. However, PEJ notes: “Nearly a quarter of U.S. adults, 23%, now get news on at least two devices: a desktop/laptop computer and smartphone, a computer and a tablet, a tablet and a smartphone, or on all three.”

Also: “For most with multiple devices, there is not a single place for news. People who acquire mobile devices appear to be using them to get news on all their devices. This also suggests they may be getting more news more often. About a third (34%) of desktop/laptop news consumers now also get news on a smartphone. About a quarter (27%) of smartphone news consumers also get news on a tablet. While this smartphone/tablet news consumer group is small—just 6% of the population overall—it is a large percentage of those who own smartphones and tablets. Fully 44% of people who own both kinds of devices use both for news. What’s more, most of those individuals (78%) still get news on the desktop or laptop as well.”

Each is a threat and a promise. Facebook and other social media are additional distributors of content, but they are also are rivals for advertising revenues. The new tablets, smartphones and other mobile technologies represent new ways to reach audiences, but they are also a new wave of new technology that news companies need to react to. Even as traditional media institutions continue to struggle to find a sustainable model after more than a decade of declining advertising revenues and digital upheaval, the new wave threatens to shift the media landscape out from under them once more.

There is some time to adapt. News sites now get 9% of their traffic from social media, up about 57% in two years. That is almost half of what comes from search engines.

he social media staff has been working with individual desks to get them to include social media in their discussions of coverage, in the same way they think of reporting and photography.

Pilhofer hinted that the Times will be adding to its social media staff, too.

“There’s a lot of conversations happening right now about trying to figure out ways to do a lot more than we’re currently capable of doing,” he said. Throughout the company, “there is agreement that social and community are fundamental to what we do and that there needs to be significant investment in it.”

The New York Times and three other leading global news organizations are joining Knight-Mozilla OpenNews, a partnership aimed at driving open source innovation in news.

This could be an emblematic announcement for the future of publishing. Technology and Media coming closer is an interesting trend and one that shows some in the Media industry understand their future is in embracing technology; not fighting it.
Via Guillaume Decugis

Several news sites have implemented paywalls in the past year, and the trend continues into 2012. The Los Angeles Times launched its paywall on Monday, and Gannett recently announced that all of its papers except for USA Today will be behind a paywall by the end of the year.

As more news sites consider subscription plans, they’ll inevitably face tough questions — not just about how to implement paywalls but about how and whether paywalls will affect their social media goals.

I talked with folks from five different news organizations to find out how they’ve balanced serving subscribers and non-subscribers on social networks. They each have different ideas and strategies, suggesting there’s no one-size-fits-all approach

Sharing your scoops to your social media accounts is a must to distribute your curated content. Not only will it drive traffic and leads through your content, but it will help show your expertise with your followers.

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